Chapter 3: Escaping Ice Creams and Making Friends

Not trusting my legs to be able to run fast enough, I put on my best fake smile (which, admittedly, was not really good) and decided to face Ice Cream Boy.

'Hey! You never told me your name.'

'Oh, right, let me introduce myself, my name is Chandler Kiehl.' "You killed my father, prepare to die".

'Like the character from "Friends"'!' Of course Finn had to say something.

'Uh, yeah...by the way, Thormund, I was thinking...since you've never been here, I thought maybe I could show you around? Are you free tomorrow afternoon? We could meet at the ice cream stand.' He reminded me of an overzealous frog.

I really did not want to meet up with him alone, but I felt kind of bad for turning him down: I had, after all, seen myself in the mirror, and I wholeheartedly understood why he was so obsessed with me.

So, I decided to pull a brilliant tactic that would hopefully make him not want to meet up with me.

'Sounds like a plan! Finn and I were just talking about how much we would like to get to know the town better, and with you, a local, we're sure to visit all the essential spots.' I saw his face fall and knew that I had him.

'Um, yeah, that would be cool. Is six okay with you guys?' Was he that excited about meeting up that he was determined to do so in spite of my stepbrother?

'Six is perfect.' Thanks for confirming, Finn.

'I'll see you guys there, then. Bye Finn, Thormund.' He said, staring at me.

'Bye, Chandler Bing!'

'See you tomorrow, Chandler.'

Once he left, I let out a sigh. In the end, it hadn't been so bad, if you left out the part where I would have to spend the entire afternoon with a stranger whose name sounded scarily close to chandelier.

'Dude, I can't believe that just happened. There was something off about him, don't you think? I mean, the fact that he kept calling you Thormund with a straight face was odd in of itself.'

'That's your take on the conversation? What about the fact that we'll have to spend more than five minutes with him tomorrow? Ugh, I really don't want to go.'

'But like...didn't you want to have a super romantic summer fling or something?'

'Where did you get that from, Finn?'

'Oh, I read that "Musts For This Summer" list you had in your desk drawer.' Well, that was embarrassing.

'First, stop snooping through my things, and second, that doesn't mean I'm going to jump at the first guy that shows interest in me.'

'Well, he doesn't seem to share your opinion.'

'This town literally has less than four thousand inhabitants, I'm probably the first gay guy he's met in his life.' To be honest, the only other gay man I had ever met was that creepy teacher, , so it wasn't my place to judge.

We continued to wander around the fair for a while, and I actually participated in a few games, where I lost miserably and only got a sympathetic smile from the owner of the stand, but Finn actually managed to win the "Pick a Duck" game: the difference in size between him and the ducks was quite funny to witness. He won a plastic duck that made creepy noises, which was absolutely terrifying, and I was not looking forward to having to sleep in the same room as that thing.

Eventually, we did end up meeting up with Dad and Carol and, to my own horror and distress, he had won her this gigantic bright blue teddy bear, and I began to wonder whether they were thirteen or fifty.

After we walked around some more and got on the Ferris Wheel again, we made our way back to our beloved house to eat dinner and plan the next day.

'We should go scuba diving.'

'Actually, Burt and I already made an appointment for next Wednesday.'

'Of course you did.'

'I don't appreciate the sarcasm, Kurt.'

'Sorry, Dad.'

'What do you suggest, Kurt?'

'Well, Carol, I suggest doing something that involves zero brain power.' I feared Dad was going to tell me off again, but he seemed distracted with the mosquito that was flying around the room.

'In that case, how about if we spend a nice and relaxing morning at the beach.' I didn't know that the beach was considered to be a nice and relaxing destination, but that idea seemed better than participating in any kind of water sport, so I agreed to it.

'And in the afternoon we can go to the center of town to look at the shops.' Going shopping with Carol meant faking that I liked half the stuff she suggested, so I wasn't looking forward to doing that, even if it was a better option than Gelato Chandler.

'Actually, Kurt and I are meeting up with this guy Kurt met today at the beach.'

'Oh, really? When did you meet him?'

'Oh, he was working at the ice cream stand, but I can totally cancel it if he's getting in the way of our plans.'

'Please don't, Kurt! I can't believe you've already made a new friend when we've only been here for twenty four hours.' Yes, Dad, I admire my social skills.

'"Friend" is a very generous term considering we've had two conversations that were led by him.'

'Dude, but that's because he's into you. Like, Mom, Burt, he was totally flirting with Kurt the whole time, even if he thinks his name is Thormund.'

'There's so much to unpack here.' Poor Carol seemed stressed.

'Well, basically, when they met Kurt told him that his name is Thormund to "protect his real identity". And the guys just seems to be into him for whatever reason.'

'I see.'

'Why do I have such an odd son?' Thanks, Dad.

'So, we saw him again at the fair and we arranged to meet up tomorrow to have a walk around town, even if he definitely only wanted Kurt to go.'

'That is definitely not happening.' Oh no, Dad was getting protective because he thought Chandelier Bing was going to attack me and my oh so precious virginity. 'You are going to go with them regardless of what they want, and you are to keep an eye on them at all times.'

'Yessir.'

Shortly after that, the conversation ended and we decided to go to bed since it was late. After all, we did have an exciting day ahead of us.

While I slept decently, the same could not be said about Finn: from the sound of his snores and the level of sleep that he was in when I tried to wake him up, one would think that the guy had reached freaking nirvana while sleeping.

Eventually, I succeeded in waking him up, and we made our way to the kitchen to eat breakfast at the glorious hour of eleven in the morning, where we saw Dad and Carol, who were about to leave for the beach, looking at us with a mix of disappointment and incredulity.

'We're heading to the beach now, and if we don't see you at the same place we were yesterday in thirty minutes you're going to be the ones in charge of cleaning the entire house when we leave.' Needless to say, we went so fast we must have beat a word record. Something about the look in Carol's eyes told us she was being completely serious.

While we were walking to the beach, Finn opened his big mouth to make a suggestion that told that he was getting tired of hanging out only with me.

'Do you think we can hang out with Sam today or something? He seemed pretty cool yesterday.'

'Fine by me since he's on the other side of the beach from Cornetto Kiehl. Although don't you think we might disturb him while he's working?'

'When has annoying someone stopped us from doing anything?'

'You're right. However, we should make sure that we don't look like fanboys when we approach him.'

'Us? Nah, we always look cool and detached.' I saw him trying to hide a laugh while he said that.

As we were planning our next social move, we arrived at the beach, where we spent around half an hour with Dad and Carol since we had actually been ignoring them during the trip, and then went to swim for a while to exercise or something of the sort.

After that exciting hour, we finally decided to go and talk to (and possibly hang out) with our soon-to-be friend. To be honest, I am not so sure if we did it because we were genuinely interested in him as a person or because we were bored out of our minds.

'Dude, I'm getting kinda nervous, what if he doesn't like me?'

'Someone would say you look like you're going to meet your date for the first time.' Finn glared at me.

'But like, isn't it a bit weird?'

'You were literally the person who suggested that we do this. And I was literally the person who answered with the same comment. We are not backing out from this now, the kayak place is less than twenty feet away from us.

'Okay okay, what should we start the conversation with?'

'We can ask him if his ridiculous hair color is real or not.'

'We will do no such thing.'

Finn's complaints were getting annoying, but at least we had gotten to the kayak rental, so the moment of truth had finally arrived.

We saw Sam staring at the horizon while looking insanely bored, so I figured that our timing was actually perfect, and pushed Finn to go and start the conversation, since he was probably able to empathize with other teenage boys better than me.

'Hey dude, do you remember us from yesterday? We came here with our parents at around ten and rented a couple of kayaks for an hour or so.' A bit too excited, but you seem to know what you're doing, Finn.

'Hey, nice seeing you guys here! Are you looking into renting another kayak?' Maybe this guy, just like Ice Cream Cone, was just interested in bringing in more customers by being overly nice.

'Actually, we were walking and we saw you look super bored, so we thought that joining you and entertaining you was the right thing to do.' Sam laughed at my comment and seemed to loosen up a bit. My god, was I a smooth talker.

'Ha! You're right: this morning has been super slow, I only had this group of teenagers from my high school come by and rent out a few, which was like super awkward, because who wants to rent out anything to a bunch of people that you go to Physics class with?

Plus, they also had the nerve to be passive aggressive with me, like what's that about? I think it's cuz they're on the basketball team and I do tend to make fun of them because the football team is so much better. I don't get why they would be weird about it outside of school, you know?' Actually Sam, I do not know, because I tuned out of your long ass rant ten minutes ago.

'Dude yeah, I totally get it, guys who play basketball are always really annoying. It's like, they act as if their sport is so special compared to football.' Finn did actually seem to understand what he was talking about.

'Preach dude, are you on your school's football team?' Sam was sporting a possibly gleaming smile.

'Yeah, I'm the team's captain and the quarterback.' Finn looked so proud of his footballistic accomplishments.

'That's so rad, I am the wide receiver.'

'That's cool too I guess.' That seemed like the equivalent of a backhanded compliment in the football world. 'How many games did you win last season?'

'We made it to the quarter finals but a team from Trenton ended up beating us, which sucked.' He looked quite sad while reminiscing about his failure of a football season.

They continued talking about the trials and tribulations of the football world and I grew so so (so so) bored of it. There I was, thinking that talking to Sam would mean that we would all be participants of a fun conversation involving broader-range topics, but it seemed I could not have been more wrong. Since they seemed to be having a ball, I decided to leave discreetly and be the one who looked for crabs on the shore.

While I was walking down the shore, I decided to collect all of the cool seashells that I saw, since that was an activity that I had missed out on as a child.

After finding many different ones, I went back to our towels and placed them in my bag, where they took up a significant amount of space.

I laid on my sunbed to sunbathe and hopefully achieve that sun-kissed effect I was going for. However, I found that laying in the sun could be quite boring, and although I could have probably asked Mr. Häagen Dazs for a massage, I came to the conclusion that calling Rachel and seeing what she was doing was a better idea.

'Oh my god! Hi Kurt! How are things going in Cape May?!'

'Oh my god! Hi Rachel! Things are going questionably in Cape May!'

'Really?! Why is that?!' She hadn't seemed to notice my sarcasm.

'Let's just say that this place is filled with teenagers with odd personalities and low-quality restaurants.'

'But Finn texted me yesterday and told me that you had met this new guy at an ice cream stand. I can't remember his name, but it was the same one as a "Friend"'s character, I think it was Ross or something.'

'Chandler.'

'Right, Chandler. But isn't that good, though? Finn said that he was quite smitten with you-'

'Intensely flirting with me.'

'And that you were meeting today to go for a romantic stroll around town-'

'Romantic stroll around town with my stepbrother?'

'Where he would eventually declare his undying love and devotion-'

'We've known each other for a day.'

'And you would live an exciting summer romance à la Donna from "Mamma Mia".'

'You are insane.'

'I know.' I just knew that she had made an absurd smirk on the other side of the telephone line.

'I really didn't mean it as a compliment, you should know that I am not taking anything of what you've said seriously and am, in fact, going to pretend that the past three minutes haven't happened.'

'Okay fine, but what is going on with Chandler? Are you into him? Is he cute?'

'First of all, nothing is going in nor will anything ever go on. Second, I am most definitely not into him, and third, he looks like Tyler Oakley in 2013 with side-swept bangs, so you can arrive to the conclusion on whether he is cute or not by yourself.'

'I see. What about the Sam guy Finn told me about? What's up with him?'

'He's basically blond Finn. Actually, they're maintaining an entertaining conversation about the football season as we're speaking.'

'And you aren't with them?'

'Why would I voluntarily stay somewhere where people are talking about sports?'

'Fair enough. Should I tell you about how things are going on in Lima?'

'Go ahead.' To be completely honest, I tuned out most of what she was saying, since I, like the reader, had grown bored of the conversation. Rachel could be quite the blabbermouth at times.

After she talked for what seemed to be ages (seriously, I was pretty sure a new ice age had occurred while we she was talking), I hung up and returned to my own devices, which included reading the same book I had been reading the say before and occasionally throwing seashells at Dad's head and then acting nonchalant when he turned around.

'Dad.'

'Yeah, Kurt?'

'I'm going to the beach bar to get a coke since I'm getting thirsty, do you want anything?'

'A beer, please.'

'I'm underage, Dad, I am not legally allowed to purchase nor consume any alcoholic beverage.'

'Then I won't have anything, thank you.' He seemed a bit disappointed with the idea of not having a beer, but I guessed it was on him if he was so lazy to get one himself.

As I went to the beach bar, I passed Chocapic's ice cream stand, and I ran as fast as the wind to make sure that he didn't see me. I was 100% sure that I had looked like an elegant gazelle running through the desert.

I arrived at the long-awaited beach bar, and was once again served by a teenager. I was starting to wonder if the beach of Cape May was some sort of labor camp for the young population of the town.

Nevertheless, I got my coke, which was fantastic considering I was dying for something that would rot my brain the way Coca Cola did.

While I was drinking from the can, I thought that I ought to check on Finn to see how he was doing since leaving him alone with Sam for such a long time hadn't seemed like a great thing considering his knack for messing up in new social settings. As I made my way to the kayak rental, I accidentally stepped on a sandcastle that a bunch of little boogers were making and almost got into a verbal fight with the overprotective parents who were even more upset about it than the children. Assholes.

I finally saw Finn and Sam in the distance, and made a run for it for again, although I wasn't sure if I had been as graceful this second time.

'Hey! How are things going?' I was once again acting with the same nonchalance and coolness as before. I was sure both of them were impressed with my presence.

'Great! Sam here has told me that we can hang out with his friends some time over the next few days.'

'Yeah, because the fact that the first teen that you guys have met during your stay is Chandler is bad luck on your side. He's a total loser and does not represent the teenage population of Cape May, most of us are pretty cool.' Sam seemed really keen on upholding the reputation of the Cape May teens.

'That sounds like a good idea. Do you, by any chance, know the teenage girl who works at the beach bar? I find it quite odd that the only people working at the beach services are teens.'

'Dude, why would that be odd? Where would we work if not at the beach, the souvenir shop?' Sam's point did seem valid enough.

'There's a girl working at the beach bar?' Of course, Finn did not only take a whole minute to process my question, but was also solely interested in the fact that there was a girl working there.

'Yes, but she is kinda boring, so I wouldn't recommend pursuing her.' You are also kinda boring, Samuel.

'I see, I have a girlfriend anyway so I wasn't actually interested.' Sure, Finn.

'Really? That's totally rad, I've been trying to date this one girl for the longest time but she keeps ignoring me.'

'I wonder why that would be.' Thankfully, Sam didn't seem to hear my remark.

'By the way guys, my best friend who also works here, as a lifeguard, is coming over in a few cuz we've met up to have lunch together since we both only have morning shifts today. Wanna join us? He'll probably be cool with it since he's always super chill.'

Finn and I looked at each other and, after telepathically communicating to each other that the idea was fine with both of us, we agreed to go to lunch with Sam and his lifeguard bestie.

'There he is!' Sam pointed at possibly the most attractive person I had seen in my life, seriously, that was your friend, Sam? You couldn't have started with the fact that the friend in question had amazing eyes, amazing hair and overall amazing everything?

Was I thirsting over someone who I had seen for three seconds and was over ten feet away from me? Maybe, and I was most definitely ashamed of myself. Because I didn't want to be caught pining over a stranger, I made sure I acted calm and collected while Lifeguard Boy made his way over.

While I was looking into the distance and checking my nails, I heard Sam greet the mysterious stranger:

'Hey dude! Let me introduce you to my new friends. They're gonna join us for lunch today since they're new here and don't know anyone. Finn, Kurt, this is my friend Blaine, and Blaine, these are my friends Finn and Kurt.' Sam grinned at all of us, and Blaine looked at Finn and I and waved his hand somewhat awkwardly.

'Hi! Nice to meet you guys, hope you've been enjoying Cape May so far.' I haven't, but I'm sure I will now that I'll be spending time with you, Beach Protector Blaine.